LAHORE – The PML-Q has launched a campaign to determine the number of its deserters in all the districts of Punjab, in a bid to recover its political losses ahead of the upcoming general elections, TheNation has learnt.
Sources privy to the developments regarding the campaign told this scribe on Friday that the party’s high command asked the second-line leadership to direct all the remaining organisations of the districts to submit their reports about dents in the party after Eidul Fitr.
They informed that the party’s top leadership had also constituted a committee comprising Raja Basharat, Chaudhary Zaheeruddin, Akram Chaudhary and Nasir Gill to oversee the said drive.
The sources further revealed that remaining loyalists of the Chaudharys would inform the party leadership of the number of the current desertions, besides further possible change of loyalties in their respective districts before the next polls, adding that a similar drive had also been started at the tehsil level.
They said the district leaders of the party would prepare lists of the suitable candidates for filling the vacant party offices and send the same to the committee tasked to supervise the campaign. “The district leadership has been further directed to prepare lists of candidates for fielding them in the next general elections only in those constituencies in which the PML-Q has left with no option,” the sources added.
They have been instructed to focus those prominent clans in each district of the province who are in the state of isolation for various reasons to muster their support for the ‘sinking boat’ of the PML-Q, which received its first jolt in the result of 2008 polls, sources said. They also informed that the focus of the drive would be South and some parts of the North Punjab in which it secured maximum number of seats of national and provincial assembly.
While the committee will tour Multan, Dera Ghazi Khan and Bahawalpur divisions in South Punjab after Eid in an effort to boost the morale of the remaining party loyalists in the districts fall under the said divisions.
When contacted, Chaudhary Zaheeruddin, said the campaign was aimed at assessing the damages to the party in various districts of the province and claimed that his party was enjoying the support of some of the political heavyweights in the province.